Brand New 90? Here's your 5.3 to-do list!

[Zagam 1,982]

I made this post on Reddit, thought I'd bring it here. Enjoy my path that let me get to 477 item level the same day I hit 90 on my Enhance Shaman in 4 hours.

The post I made in regards to what you do when you hit level 90 caught some steam, but now things are different, so I'll try to sum them up here.

• Get to the Skies. Purchase flying for 2500g (easily acquired by questing 89-90)
• Visit Wrathion. He is located in an area pinched by Kun-lai Summit, Valley of Four Winds, and Jade Forest. Acquire your Legendary Quest.
• Head to your capital city (Orgrimmar or Stormwind) and acquire pop-up quest to head to the Isle of Thunder
• Head to the Isle of Thunder and complete the scenarios that open up the Island of Thunder's phasing to current day
• Find yourself a Trove of the Thunder King (rare chest) or a rare mob on the Isle of Thunder. Acquire a Key to Lei Shen's Treasure Trove.
• Complete the Treasure Trove scenario by opening up every chest you see. Focus on acquiring every chest you see, regardless of size, in the first room, left side of the hallway to the 2nd room, and the 2nd room. Head to Youtube for best pathing guides. Pray for Burial Trove Keys and make a goal to get approximately 15-16 Elder Charms of Good Fortune
• Head to Cho's place and complete his quests to do the two new scenarios, Blood in the Snow and Dark Heart. Each of these will reward you with a chest and 50 Valor. The chest has a chance to give you a piece of loot for your current loot specialization of 463 item level.
• Attempt to get in a Sha of Anger kill as well as a Galleon kill. Use 2 of your Elder Charms of Good Fortune and may the RNG gods treat you well. With any luck, you'll acquire anywhere from 1 to 4 pieces of 496 gear.
• Head to Durotar (unsure of Alliance equivalent) and do the small event chain that opens up the weekly quest to gather 150 of each resource from the Northern Barrens (avoiding details to not spoil plot). Make sure you get into a group that is killing the Commanders to acquire lots of resources fast (should kill about 6-8 Commanders for 150 of each resource)
• When you acquire your Mojo when turning in weekly quest (+200 Valor), check to see if you looted a particular purple token piece of armor. If so, combine this with your Mojo to create a piece of gear appropriate for your loot specialization with a 489 item level. If you don't pick one up, head to the AH and see if you can find Latent Kor'kron Armor for around 1k gold. If so, buy.
• Head to Kun-lai Summit with your quest and help the old Panda up the mountain. Acquire item level 502 boots for your troubles.
• If you are using a weapon that is less than 450 item level, queue for the scenario "Arena of Annihilation" and complete it. This will reward you 1 450 item level weapon. For you Rogues, Enhance Shamans, and 2H DKs, you'll have to acquire weapons from LFR or Heroics
• With any luck, you have reached 460 item level and can queue for MSV LFR. On your first pass through, make sure you use a Elder Charm of Good Fortune on each boss if he can drop an upgrade for you. The chance to get gear from T14 LFR has been greatly increased.

From here on out, your gearing strategy will be tied to RNG. Once you complete all of LFR MSV, hope that your item level is 470. If it is not, do random Heroic Dungeons and collect any loot you can. Your item level is boosted by gear you don't even equip as long as you are ABLE to equip it. Acquire 463 blues and spend 750 Justice Points to upgrade them to 471 item level. With some preserverance, you can enter LFR Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring.

Once you get to 470, you'll be tied into more luck with getting drops, but your goal is to do anything you can to get to 480 item level. In order to get to 480, continue to run LFR HoF and ToES. You can use your Elder Charms on bonus loot even after you have already downed a boss in a particular week. Spend all of your tokens. You'll either 1) run out of tokens or 2) get to 480. If you run out, try again the following week with 15+ new chances at loot by repeating your Treasure Trove Run. Also make sure that you acquire 50 Lesser Charms of Good Fortune to acquire 3 Mogu Runes at the lowest floor at your Pandaria capital city and go kill Oondasta and Nalak. Use one Mogu Rune on each. If you hit 480, do the following:

• Acquire the quest "Heroic Deeds" and find/form a group of 3 and queue for a random Heroic Scenario. By completing any random Heroic Scenario, you will get a guaranteed random 516 item level item. I got a 516 cloak the first time I did this, so I'm not sure what all drops.
• At 480, Throne of Thunder LFR is open to you allowing you access to everything available at this point. Spend your Mogu Runes appropriately (in Throne of Thunder LFR, but only if you're unable to do regular modes) on Oondasta and Nalak.

Best of luck to all of you as you gear out your new 90's!

[Whitewolf 1]

lol...took me 24 hours and this might have been faster...but you forgot a couple. If you get blood spirits from the chests, and you are in a guild with blood spirit patterns (my wife has all the leather worker patterns for our guild) then you may consider the 496 gloves and chest to boost quickly. Plus blood spirits have taken a tank in price since ToT. Also, though I typically don't recommend raiding in PvP gear, the new PvP gear is almost on par with PvE gear, just has PvP power but up to two useful stats, consider filling in your missing pieces to get you to 480 with the 476 honor gear.

[Zagam 1,982]

All good suggestions, but I'm going with the safe assumption that people don't have gold to blow through. I'm trying to go with the best low-effort, high reward, low-cost method.

[Cyndaria 0]

Doing these things really did gear my Warlock quickly. She's only been level 90 for about 2 weeks now and she's at item lvl 485 now.

Also, yes the alliance goes to Durotar as well to quest up until the weekly for the Darkspear Rebellion.

Edited June 5, 2013 by Cyndaria

[Alerian 0]

Great guide!

You forgot to mention tho, that after doing all the scenarios to unlock the progression of the thunder island and doing the first set of dailies for the sunreavers/kirin tor, you'll most likely become Honored and be able to buy the Belt ilvl476 for 300 gold.

Edited June 6, 2013 by Alerian

[luizofoca 2]

I think the major problem to this guide and everything is if your main spec is healer.

You wont have enough equip to survive easily the scenarios in isle of thunder.

but overall a great guide.

[DirtyLittleGnome 0]

For me i plan on doing this basically, but yeah you forget to mention a few things. First off once you hit Thunder Island and get all that going and unlocked hit the Shado-Pan Assault vendor for your 522 necklace you can get it at neutral, which is basically any dailys out there and or doing 1 wing of TOT LFR. The Belt is also worth getting, as is the Trinket for valor

 

So from that 1 vendor you can get 522 Neck, Belt, Trinket (for valor) and since only thing you will be spending with your valor in 5.4 is for upgrades to gear later, you can afford to grab those 3 slots early on prior to 5.4 to make 3 slots not needing anything until 5.4 LFR (which of this writing, 8/25/13 SOO LFR wing 1 is 4 weeks away on 9/17) *the cape isnt bad either*

 

Also you can get charms from killing level 90 mobs too, so any mobs where you can farm/kill fast, such as the barrens mobs for the resources, will net you a few charms along the way, i got quite a few while waiting for the commanders to respawn, i go and kill the mobs at each of the sites for the resources, double win.

 

in 5.4 all the 489 valor gear is now going to be rep-removed and cost JUSTICE points, so my suggestion is as soon as you hit 90, queue for random heroics, grind to cap jp, then go buy 1-2 Valor pieces, and then repeat, average ~400 jp a run so will take 10 quick runs to cap out (more with bonus and varies by heroic) so if you are really hardcore about it, can get full valor set within a day or 2 easy, for free.

 

For weapons most classes can have a 1 hander or 2 hander crafted, fairly easily farmed mats but for casters there really isnt a staff other than the incscription staff so if you have max inscription on an alt or your main, craft yourself the staff that upgrades, i think it ends at 476, mats arent to bad, just takes time and effort, so plan ahead before you hit 90 and you can have weapons too. *(Doing all the heroics grinding justice you probably will get a 463 weapon along the way)*

 

You can also look up the treasures of pandaria stuff, and go farming for the 463 account bound weapons, really easy to locate, there are addons that put locations on your map, just have to get lucky for them show up or not.

 

Also as was said, get your 502 boots (super easy quest) and if you have the mats, craft yourself 496 gear, but its not neccesary with the valor gear becoming justice in 5.4

 

*5.4 is removing the weekly quest to get the mojo for the 489 gear, so this comment is only valid prior to 5.4*

 

*The 489 gear from barrens thing, is random stat, and no sockets, so its not really on par with the valor gear unless you just are using them as stepping stones, the valor gear for justice is a much better choice, but you can use the 489 barrens items as supplement to not have to grind 12k justice in a few days at start of 5.4 (if you cant stomach the grind)*

 

Once you have the Shado-pan valor gear, and have extra valor and are capping each week, use the valor to upgrade your 522's to 530, for that extra boost as soon as 5.4 hits, even though SOO drops 528's, starting out with anything over 500 ilvl will make it all smoother.

 

Once LFR SOO comes out use your valor only to upgrade 528 or 540 etc, worth mentioning, as anything lower than that is replaced now with better (528/540flex)

 

Clear all Vaults/Toes/TOT LFR's, at least once through, once you get to 500 ilvl ish, you can stop and wait for SOO in a few weeks or can continue to get better from normals/world bosses, but SOO only requires 500 ilvl so it wont take long to get there

 

also remember that when SOO comes out, drop rates will increase by a lot in TOT also so getting every last drop/upgrade from TOT is not a huge deal as you can continue to run it even when SOO comes out to get the 502's at a faster pace for last minute gear. SOO LFR gear is 528.

 

And keep in mind LFR wings wont unlock on day 1 of 5.4 usually week 2, so really we have ~4 weeks to prepare, so when 5.4 hits, go get your valor gear for justice, run all the older LFR's, world bosses, grind out valor cap etc, so you hop right into SOO LFR on week 2 of 5.4

 

make sure to do heroic scenario daily/first time thing, for the chance at 516 gear (no gems on them though)

 

Consider trying/doing flex raiding as its not as difficult as normal but better than LFR, and isnt on same reset for the week so can get some 540's by doing that, as loot is personal just like in LFR, can get into a pug or guild group and have fun!

 

In your downtime from gearing and have a good ilvl (around 500) get yourself a partner, better with healer (paladin/priest etc) and 2-3 man the Warbringers and what not for the rep items to boost your reps to get any stuff you need/want from pandaria vendors since its a new 90 (like tailoring patterns) forget the dailies unless you really bored (and doing all the dailies at your farm is the most efficient as well as farming and planting daily)

 

And finally when 5.4 hits head to the new timeless isle and find chests and do all the PVE content out there, kill rare spawns etc, and if you get lucky to find special chests that have items that can be turned into ilvl 535 items!

 

Hope this helps, gearing is super easy come 5.4, and its almost here (really excited about my alts now)

Edited August 25, 2013 by DirtyLittleGnome

[Zagam 1,982]

This guide was written for 5.4.  The change from valor gear on vendors to JP gear makes this guide obsolete.  The method to gear up now will be grind dungeons, acquire JP at a ridiculous rate, buy 489 pieces, get a few 516 pieces, and queue for SoO LFR.  Your comments make sense, but just like my guide, they'll be obsolete in less than a week.  The gearing up process will be MUCH faster and will make running 5 mans the best way to acquire gear hands down.

[MadMonk 154]

This guide was written for 5.4.  The change from valor gear on vendors to JP gear makes this guide obsolete.  The method to gear up now will be grind dungeons, acquire JP at a ridiculous rate, buy 489 pieces, get a few 516 pieces, and queue for SoO LFR.  Your comments make sense, but just like my guide, they'll be obsolete in less than a week.  The gearing up process will be MUCH faster and will make running 5 mans the best way to acquire gear hands down.

He means written for 5.3

[Itsjonny 0]

is there any chance you could do one of these for 5.4? i just started playing again and i have no idea what i'm doing.

[Furiyers 10]

It's pretty simple now. Just follow the tips in these guides for the Timeless Isle:

 

https://www.icy-veins.com/timeless-isle-wow

 

http://www.wowhead.com/news=219459/timeless-isle-guide-coins-achievements-maps-rares-and-more

 

With a full set of 496 gear plus any 535 items from burdens of eternity you'll be more than qualified for ToT LFR and just barely qualified for SoO LFR. You can purchase ToT bonus rolls for 1k timeless coins each and farm some 502 pieces there. After that you can start going through SoO LFR and eventually flex and/or ToT normal pugs (there's a bunch on OpenRaid every week). Hope this helps.

[Archimage 98]

I'll give a more explained guide to gear up quickly:

 

When you reach level 90:

1) Buy Flying in Pandaria

2) Goto Wrathion to begin the legendary quest.

3) Queue for LFR, start with MV and head up to SoO to farm the Sigils for the legendary quest.

4) While you wait for the LFR Queue, head toward Timeless Isle and complete Treasure, Treasure Everywhere. The Chest will mostly give timeless coins, but has a chance to give you Timeless gear pieces (496 iLvl). You will get Average item level 496 very fast to queue for more LFR instances.

5) If you are done with Number 4, head to the Tillers. Try to gain rep with them as fast as possible. Once you have enough rep to have 16 plots, start to plant crops that will give a random Pandaria resource (Herb or Minerals). You can either use these for your own professions, or sell on Auction House for some gold.

6) Once you have done Tillers, head to the Isle of Thunder to unlock the entire Isle through the solo instances. Gain rep from them so you can buy the Valor gear.

7) Level Cooking and Fishing by learning the cooking recipes and buying ingredients from  Sungshin Ironpaw, you can level fishing by learning the skills from Ben of the Booming Voice and fishing near him.

 

Maxing Valor:

Once per week you can queue for all the LFR instances to gain Valor up to 800 Valor (from doing ). Doing the all Tiller dailies everyday will give about 30 Valor per day. You can also do another faction's dailies to gain the remaining 200 valor faster.

 

I don't have a quick guideline for maxing Conquest fast yet.

Edited January 4, 2014 by Archimage

[Icepick 3]

I have a 83 Shaman that's got a full set of Timeless Isle gear waiting for him courtesy of my Other 90's. Doesn't get faster than that, lol.

[Moozedude 47]

I have a 83 Shaman that's got a full set of Timeless Isle gear waiting for him courtesy of my Other 90's. Doesn't get faster than that, lol.

Whats even better is having like 3-4 pieces of each slot, so you can account for the RNG of bad itemization, and also spares to use on Burdens as they're collected.

[Belicosa 11]

If you are even close to 496, hold on to the timeless gear (unless you need a boost green replaced) until you get some Burdens. Timess/Burden gear can let you skip SoO lfr, which is like digging through manure in the hope of finding something good, for flex raids (although with the advent of the oQ addon a lot of flex raids are as chaotic as lfr).

 

If you have your legendary back on at least one toon on your account, you can float across the bridge gap on all of your 90s, so make sure to hit Ordos every week (drops warforged) and do a celestial on the off chance that you'll get lucky with the RNG and get the tier legs and hands. And cap your valor every week so you can boost any Flex or better piece of gear. As of this patch you can use timeless coins to boost your valor if you didn't cap (3k timeless coins for 100 valor unless you have the account wide valor boost then 150 vp). Don't waste your time or coins in the monkey cave. The Burden drop rate was high at first, but this was quickly nerfed. The only reason to spend timeless coins in the monkey cave is if you want the Bonkers pet, which cannot be caged for trade or vendored, so once you have one, you should be done with that hole in the wall forever.

 

Regardless of what your friends might tell you, when you do get upgrades, equip and log (not in the middle of the raid please) and run your stats through Robot so you can reforge/regem as necessary. It's discouraging to a raid leader if you ask for a place on his/her team and they run you on armory and see unenchanted/ungemmed/non-reforged gear. If you keep your dailies up, affording multiple reforges (even in the same week) should not pose a financial problem.

[Orthios 271]

If you are even close to 496, hold on to the timeless gear (unless you need a boost green replaced) until you get some Burdens. Timess/Burden gear can let you skip SoO lfr, which is like digging through manure in the hope of finding something good, for flex raids (although with the advent of the oQ addon a lot of flex raids are as chaotic as lfr).

 

If you have your legendary back on at least one toon on your account, you can float across the bridge gap on all of your 90s, so make sure to hit Ordos every week (drops warforged) and do a celestial on the off chance that you'll get lucky with the RNG and get the tier legs and hands. And cap your valor every week so you can boost any Flex or better piece of gear. As of this patch you can use timeless coins to boost your valor if you didn't cap (3k timeless coins for 100 valor unless you have the account wide valor boost then 150 vp). Don't waste your time or coins in the monkey cave. The Burden drop rate was high at first, but this was quickly nerfed. The only reason to spend timeless coins in the monkey cave is if you want the Bonkers pet, which cannot be caged for trade or vendored, so once you have one, you should be done with that hole in the wall forever.

 

Regardless of what your friends might tell you, when you do get upgrades, equip and log (not in the middle of the raid please) and run your stats through Robot so you can reforge/regem as necessary. It's discouraging to a raid leader if you ask for a place on his/her team and they run you on armory and see unenchanted/ungemmed/non-reforged gear. If you keep your dailies up, affording multiple reforges (even in the same week) should not pose a financial problem.

 

Biggest problem with skipping SoO lfr and going straight into flex is that if you don't have a ToT weapon already and aren't in a guild/server that will run ToT normal, your best weapon will be ilvl 516 (heroic scenario).  Go into a flex with a 502 or lower weapon and don't be surprised if you get kicked instantly.  The same goes for trinkets, although there is a 496 TI trinket (the 535 one costs 50k coins to get), but you can only have one version equipped.  These items are the top dps increasers, asides from massive ilvl upgrades from Ordos/Celestials.  There is also the fact that you will be running into SoO blind if this is your first toon (shouldn't be quite the problem if it's not).  Understanding mechanics and how to deal with them is something most, if not all, raid leaders will be looking for.  

 

So, you SHOULD run SoO lfr because:

• Weapons and Trinkets
• Tier sets, you can't get the 4pc from Celestials
• Experience
• Item upgrades
• Valor points

Edited June 17, 2014 by Orthios

[Belicosa 11]

I actually ran lfr on all three token levels (MV, HoF, ToES; ToT; SoO). The reason I think you should get into SoO asap is its relevance. Even though you will be dumping purples for greens about a week into LoD (this always makes my heart hurt), you want to get as much experience as you can if you intend to raid on your new 90. My new 90 gives me 4 geared raid toons; unfortunately (in my opinion) I really only get to run normal/heroic on my main 565 mage. But come LoD I will have options.